Bill v Rick

Given my more or less constant annoyance at the existence of Rick Steves, and my more or less constant admiration for Bill Bryson, you can imagine my delight when the two managed to intersect for a rather amusing, well, sentence or two.

The following is an excerpt from Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a Big Country':

There were four books exclusively on Britain, plus another eight or so on Europe generally, with chapters on Britain. My favourite, at a glance, was Rick Steves' Europe 1996. I had never heard of Rick, but according to the jacket he spends several months each year 'feeling the fjords and caressing the castles', which sounds awfully diligent if a little pointless.

Now, I do like Bill, and he's become my favorite tube riding author (I even got a random comment one day as a man said to me 'have you read a walk in the woods?' I have not, but he says it's good), and to find him making fun of little Rick Steves for the essentially the same reasons as myself is really quite refreshing. Perhaps more importantly, I now consider Bill Bryson to be firmly on my side in the Rick Steves credibility war.


In more general terms, I am finding this current Bill book very interesting, as well as amusing. So what you have is an American who lived in England for the better part of 20 years back living in America writing a column on American life for an English newspaper. Anyways, it's a good read for short time periods (like waiting at the dentist, riding the bus, waiting for your drink at Starbucks) because the book is just a collection of columns that are very reasonable lengths!